


Mirror Darkly

by wired



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Grief, Loss, M/M, Nostalgia, Twincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-14
Updated: 2009-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-12 11:26:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/124361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wired/pseuds/wired
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>George ponders might-have-beens post book 7.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror Darkly

George lay in his bed above the shop, looking at the picture. He and Fred had set the camera up and waved their wands to activate the shutter as they kissed, mirrored lips fitting one into the other. In the picture, two naked men wrapped their arms around each other and sank into a kiss as intuitive and natural as breathing. He could watch every motion, the way they had always seemed to anticipate each touch, crave each movement. It was a kiss for the ages, that picture.

He remembered the night they had taken it, after they had left Hogwarts and were starting the business up. It had been stressful, and their mum was out of her mind with frustration and taking it out on everyone by yelling, and they had gone and gotten a room at the Leaky Cauldron. Fred had soundproofed it, with a sly look across from under his lashes. George had reacted by whisking all of Fred's clothes off with a twitch of his wand. They fell onto the bed in a tangle of grins and legs. They whispered endearments in their twin-language, nonsense words and babytalk fraught with lust and humming tension and hope. Fred, normally so fearless and bold, lay back and George sat astride his thigh, then bent to gnaw on his twin's right shoulder, while Fred's teeth found the same target. They kissed feverishly, and then Fred tried for a reverse, but as always, they were too evenly matched for anything conclusive to happen. It was all pushing and shoving and negotiation and balance and daring. Who had thought of taking the picture? George didn't remember, but he remembered setting up the camera, and giving Fred a hand out of the tangle of bedsheets, so they could, at last, have some token of themselves. They had set the camera, and kissed for it, and forgotten it in the kiss, dissolved into it, and started slowing pulling closer and closer to each other, until at last they overcame that hateful space between them in the air and the stupid boundary of skin, and flowed into their oneness.

The picture was all he had. Fred was dead these three months, and the mop-up of Death-Eaters was finally winding down. The shop was ticking along, although he hadn't had the heart to come up with any new charms, jokes, or wheezes. The one new thing he had made, no one would want now that the war was ending. No one wanted to think anyone else could die, after all the deaths that had already happened. _Ascentia_ , he murmured, and he was surrounded by his dead twin's scent, so very like his own that the only different part was the sharp spiciness of the battle that had.... well.

Now that everyone who had survived realized they had survived, they were bent on copulating madly, and the Slick Weasleys business was taking off, with the sensation enhancing lubricant, and the painless depiliator, and the tiny Snitch-like nipple-tormenters. If they hadn't already sent out the catalogs, George would have killed that part of the business, because selling things that he and Fred had invented to delight each other ached. Whenever he packed up an order of Light Licking Lube and Say Please Paddles, he would feel like crying. And he would slip in instructions for the _Ascentia_ spell, because you never knew, did you?

If only they had taken more pictures, taken more time for each other. If only they had not bothered getting distracted by girls. If only.

It used to be that whenever he missed Fred, he could look in the mirror and see him, mirrored as they were in the womb. But now that George was disfigured, it didn't work anymore. Fred was dead. George's reflection was no longer comforting, just a reminder that he was alone, in the midst of everyone, and no one would ever understand why his grief was so stunning.


End file.
